Winging It

Frequent Flyers not only has the cleverest of clever names for a group of aerial dancers, but it also puts on darn good shows. And its latest endeavor, Wingding!, goes above and beyond.

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More About

• Nancy Smith
• Dairy Center for the Arts

Wingding! includes a range of pieces, from choreographic premieres to hoop solos and everything in between. But the strangest, genre-bendingest part of the show has got to be artistic director Nancy Smith's "Now See Hear."

"A composer writes the music," Smith explains, "and then a computer programmer/genius person works within this program called MAX. We have a grid, so the video camera sees the space in zones, and it's programmed so that when people stop and start dancing in the zones, the music is triggered and either stops and starts over again when they start moving, picks up where it left off, or just mutes — and when they start moving again, it's further along in the piece.

"It's all choreographed," she continues, "but the dancers have the ability to stop and start based on what's happening with the sound." Basically, it's something you have to see to believe.

Wingding! opens tonight at 8 p.m. at the Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut Street in Boulder, and continues Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through April 29. Sunday shows start at 2 p.m. Tickets, $13 to $26, and information are available at www.thedairy.org or 303-444-SEAT.
Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 8 p.m. Starts: April 20. Continues through April 29